Nov 30, 2012

“What’s for launch?”
he inquired. Asking a counter question, I mumbled rather mischievously, “You
mean, you are asking what there is for lunch. Were you expecting Ilish? “No! I
have books in mind” he clarified. ‘I’m sorry’ I apologized, ‘Bongobhasha is like
that only, no?’ Then, I told him how I misunderstood a Bengali office assistant
who said Mera boss aagayee, me’n jaayegi when
it, in fact, was HIS bus!

Yes, Jug, nowadays
everyone either speaks or writes, just as I’m doing right now and just as you
always have and, in fact, just as you’ve been doing all along and/but doing so
well and for so long. I say that because for every write-up of yours, you have
so many comments. I don’t know if they comment because they have ‘something’ to
comment or having just got the infection from you, have the itch to ‘comment’
something which I’m doing now because of the itch, overcoming, of course, the
hitch to scratch in public. But who cares for public norms these days which
even Kapil Sibbal cannot properly define (Will he sue me under 66a?).

But coming back to
public speaking, public writing and public launching (of books, I mean), shall
I tell you, I, too, had my books – four of them – launched on 09-09-’12 (on the
counsel of a numerologist), not by a Neta or a Jam Aadmi (my own coinage to
contrast, compare with or cancel Aam
Aadmi) but by human beings?

I have an honest
desire to send these books to you. For a change, just choose to be a reader of
small things. I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading them because –aside- (they weren’t,
I mean, published in toi, but…) quite a lot of them have been published in
newspapers like Morocco World News, Daily Times (Pak), Kashmir Monitor, State
Observer and Central Chronicle (has published all of them). The titles, Navel
Ideas and Out in the Middle, may activate your taste buds, if you’re still
thinking of lunch! The other two, printed in devnagri, Huwee Takheer and Ek
She’r Sunata hoo’n are a compilation of my weekly column Ek She’r that ran for
five years in a local Hindi Daily Deshbandhu.

I must assure you,
I’m not fishing for anything in return from you. On the facebook and twitter my
profile intro says I am a kid of 70 and I love kidding, seriously, which I
think I’m doing now because I think I’m a nobody. | If you’re a nobody, too, |
come along, let me know your postal address, I send you the books and you,
hopefully, have a nice time. Otherwise, I’ll think, like Dushyant Kumar, I had
thrown a stone into the sky… it didn’t pierce!

Why do you need to be
a no-body to be able to respond to me? Because some-bodies don’t normally
respond or reply to a no-body like me! And, I’ve made it almost a habit to
write to one of the some-bodies to find
out if they’re really some-bodies, because real Some-Bodies, like, our former
President, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, have responded and / or replied to me!